Beautify the city or improve its choking transportation system?
Yogita Tahilramani The Jakarta Post Jakarta
To Governor Sutiyoso, spending Rp 14 billion on renovating a water fountain at a Jakarta traffic circle may have seemed a wise gift for the capital's anniversary last week, but residents here who commute to work daily consider it an insult.
Residents say they believe the money could have been put to better use had it been spent on overhauling the poorly performing transportation system in Jakarta, particularly rail.
Advertising consultant Alex Prihandoyo, 32, said on Sunday that Sutiyoso seemed to have forgotten that incoming commuters during the day pushed the city's population from 8.3 million to 11 million.
Nila Rustam, 28, works at a cafe in Depok and rides an old, rattling train from Kota station in Central Jakarta to her workplace in fear that "an accident" is bound to happen.
"The trains move from side to side and are really crammed, with people sitting and standing around me. If an accident occurred, it would not be surprising," Nila said.
The present transportation system in Jakarta comprises both rail and bus systems. The buses are chaotic, without any proper control over operations. The problem is worsened by the presence of angkot (public minivans), which leads to inefficiencies in the system.
D.A. Simarmata of the School of Economics at the University of Indonesia, recently wrote in this paper that public transportation in the city was not part of an integrated system, like that in industrialized countries.
A visible characteristic of its disintegration, he said, was the terminals and the points of passenger transfer from one bus route to another.
There is also no reliable schedule within the bus system, let alone a coordinated schedule within and between the bus system and the rail system, he added.
Asked why railway officials did not coordinate with those from the bus system, spokesman for state-owned railway company PT Kereta Api (PT KA) Zainal Abidin said, "How could we consider that? Our main concern is making sure that trains are in operational condition."
He said most of the 213 trains running across Greater Jakarta daily were purchased in 1976, and spare parts for trains, available from countries like Japan, Korea or Belgium, were extremely expensive.
Zainal said on Monday that electric commuter trains were a loss-making business.
"The joke doing the rounds among railway staffers here is that when the trains don't run, we lose Rp 15 billion per year; when they do, we lose Rp 50 billion," Zainal said. He was serious.
Official data from PT KA states that in 2000, electric trains in Jakarta incurred losses of Rp 69.5 billion, due to mounting electricity bills, fuel price hikes, economy class discount rates, ticket scalpers and increasing numbers of people who took free rides. In 2001, the losses amounted to Rp 52.7 billion.
Reasons for these losses can range from critical matters, such as electricity bills, to overcrowding of train cars, which should normally accommodate up to 140 people, but are today crammed with 400 on a daily average, most of whom are free-riders.
"This is not counting the people who sit on top of the cars free of charge, and who risk getting killed in doing so. We are also struggling to pay our electricity bills," Zainal said.
In 1999, PT KA had to pay up Rp 17.7 billion in outstanding bills for Bogor station, after the state electricity company (PLN) threatened to cut off power to its station.
"We also need to change 546 wheels on electric commuter trains, as they are wearing out. We have no money," he said.
Electric commuter trains in Jakarta accommodate up to 400,000 passengers on average, but there are only 800 railway staff including ground staff, a reason why it is almost impossible to keep track of joyriders.
The government has said it would raise transportation fares by 28 percent to 40 percent in two stages, starting this month and on Jan. 1, 2003. It had earlier come up with plans to cope with the traffic problems but nothing seems to have been implemented. There were plans years ago to build a mass rapid transit (MRT) system in the form of subways, but the cost was beyond reach, leading to its postponement.
Jakarta has 5,411 large buses, 4,981 medium-sized buses and 11,848 minivans. Only 68 percent of the total currently operate as the rest are in need of repair.
The city administration, Zainal said, needed to carry out a thoroughgoing review of the whole transport system, before it spent billions on projects such as renovating an already-working, and beautiful, water fountain.